


Paying Penance

by olivemartini



Series: Infinity War Saga [6]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Avengers: End Game, Clint Barton character study, F/M, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), character dearth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-09-13 14:30:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16894389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/olivemartini/pseuds/olivemartini
Summary: He thought that they were safe.Clint should have known better.





	Paying Penance

He retires.

He retires, and Clint means to stick with that, even if he's a little bored.  Part of him misses it, the fighting, the adrenaline, the throbbing in his fingers as he lets loose arrow after arrow, but most of him doesn't.  Most of him is fine right here, with cooking slightly burnt pancakes in the morning so Laura has the chance to sleep in for once in her life, with the kids crawling over him and the oldest just learning how to be a bit of a brat, going to from fighting bad guys to attending PTG meetings and helping with math homework, and he loves it.  He really, really loves it- loves his kids and his wife and the old farm house, and if he sneaks out at night to target shoot in the woods  _just in case,_ just to stay sharp, well, no one needs to know about it.

Everybody has secrets, after all.

The Barton family just has more than most.

But then Cap calls.

"I have to go."  He doesn't know why he's bothering to argue.  The kids are in bed, and it is only him and Laura, her watching him from the kitchen table with her arms crossed, looking more tired than he had ever seen her.  But he didn't have to fight her.  She wouldn't ask him to stay.  She knows better.  Knows that he would always end up leaving, but she trusts that he's always going to come back.  "It's  _Steve._ "

Laura isn't impressed.  Hasn't been with any of his Shield colleagues, other than Natasha, and other than a grudging acceptance that now Stark would pop in sometimes for coffee and to offer some ridiculous scholarship for the kids. Clint can't quite figure out how to break it to Tony that his kids aren't smart.

"I know."  She looks like she might cry.  It doesn't happen often, but Clint knows how to tell- the way she looks up at the ceiling instead of him, how she bites at the inside of her cheek, the fact that she is dipping her fingers into her scalding hot coffee just to be distracted by the pain.  He thinks that she cries every time he leaves, but he just isn't here to see it.  "It's just that-,"   _It's just that you promised me you were done.  It's just that you almost died and it was only a fluke that you didn't, only because of a human lab rat with a heart that you're here now.  It's just that you said that you had to take the kids skiing tomorrow, they went to bed early for it, can't you tell the world no just this one time?  It's just that you spent so long taking care of the entire universe, when are you going to start taking care of us?_ "I know you have to go."

He wants to say more, but doesn't have time.  Clint already has his duffel bag swung over his shoulder, and maybe that's why she never asks him to stay, because he already makes up his mind before he goes to ask permission.  The fact that he had a go bag packed and ready in the attic maybe should have been his first clue that he wasn't really retired.

"Don't worry.  It's just this mess with Steve."  Later he would try to fool himself into thinking that he wasn't really lying, that that was what he really thought it was.  Just a fight between buddies.  Just a mess with the team.  Not a bombing at the UN and an international scandal with Wakanda waiting to happen and the freeing of a fugitive.  "I'll be back soon."

 

 

 

He wasn't back soon.

They get caught instead.  Rounded up, taken to the raft, and Clint doesn't want to think about the actual arrest, the wreckage around them- all those agents from SHIELD ringing around them with their guns pointed, Stark begging to them to take it easy, that Spider kid curled up on the ground and clutching at his ribs, making a little whimpering sound every time he breathes, the airplanes and cargo trucks all around them, smashed open like some toddler had thrown a tantrum, and maybe that's exactly what they had done, maybe they were wrong, after all, so Clint lays down his bow and doesn't cry out when the first agent knocks him to the ground so hard that his shoulder is wrenched out of place.

( _He didn't have time to focus on that, anyways.  He was too busy looking at Wanda, telling her to calm down, that it's okay, that they won't hurt you if they just stay still, and she had listened even though there was panic swarming all over her face.  Clint had already given up his weapon, so there was nothing that he could do when the agents fell down around her, forced her down to the ground and into that jacket and forced her hands into metal fists._ Clint,  _she had screamed, and all he could offer was empty promises and to spit curses at Stark, curses and pleas and bargains and think how he should have just left her back at the tower,_ Clint, what are they doing, where are they taking us  _and he could not get to her, could not give her any answers, anyways._ )

"I think Stark was right, you know."  It was their third day on the raft.  Wanda had gone quiet on day two, but Clint had kept up a steady stream of chatter at Sam's urging, telling her all kinds of stories- how he and Laura met, about the science fair Cooper had entered and definitely lost, that one night Lila had told him she was going to grow up to be in the army so she could be a hero like him and Auntie Nat and later Clint had punched the walls out in the barn until his hand was full of splinters.  "To sign the accords."

Clint didn't know what the accords were.  He wasn't sure it mattered.  It didn't look like they were getting out of here anytime soon.  

"I'm a weapon."  There was something funny in her voice.  Clint wants to tell her no, but then he sees Vision being pushed down through fourteen floors and  _you're pulling your punches_ and doesn't really know a lie big enough to cover that up.  "And weapons don't get to just walk around on the street."

"You saved the world."  This was the line that they keep parroting back and forth to each other- we saved the world.  We tore up New York but that was only because Loki brought the aliens, the fact that people got hurt and we left them on the street wasn't our fault, there just weren't enough good guys to go around that day.  We kill people, but only bad people, and never mind that sometimes we don't even lose sleep over it,  _we're the good guys._ Sometimes we don't wait for permission and ask forgiveness instead and maybe that's a bit dangerous, but they saved the world, damn it.  "In Savokia. We couldn't have-,"

"I was cleaning up my own mess."  The argument that Clint had died in his throat.  "And so was everyone else. We made Ultron.  And people died because of it."

She's quiet for a long time after that, but then-, "I don't want to die in here."

He feels something clog in his throat and has to swallow it down.  It takes him a moment before he can be sure that he can get the words out.  "You won't," He says, and it feels like those nights after the Battle of New York where Cooper would wake up screaming and Clint would promise that the aliens would never be able to get him, that dad would always be there to protect him from the bad guys, and for a moment Clint is thankful for the wall between them just so she couldn't see that he was crying.  Clint never could stand it when other people knew that he was afraid.  "I promise."

 

 

 

"It's over, isn't it?"  Laura says, when he finally makes it home, and he has not even had the chance to wash off the smell of the raft before she is holding onto him like she does not intend to let go, looking at him like if he says no she might slap him.  There is no blame in his eyes, and Clint does not know how that is possible, when he had left her with nothing but a kiss on the cheek and a promise to be back soon and doesn't come home for a month instead.  "Please tell me that it's over."

"Yeah," He says, crying in front of her for the first time, and she brushes his tears away.  "Yeah, it's over."

( _But it isn't.  He knows it isn't because one of the guards at the prison had slipped him a burner phone with a note from Cap, and instead of throwing it away, it's still in his pocket, and as soon as he can sneak away, he's climbing up in the hayloft and prying off that loose board, and he's going to try and forget about it, but Clint knows he'll probably check it, every morning and every night, just in case.  Just in case someone needs him._ )

 

 

For the first time in his life, Clint is starting to learn what it's like to be safe.

It's a bit weird, going into town when everyone knows that he's this super hero turned felon, but after everything, he doesn't find it that hard.  The kids do ( _they have trouble at school, and it's a bit exhausting, sometimes, to have to hear about cafeteria time struggles and the mean words people say and he always thinks about telling them that some people have it worse, but somehow Clint never does_ ) and he can tell that Laura finds it lonely, to go from having friends to eat brunch with and now be the town's latest piece of gossip, but it's okay.  He doesn't think she would trade it.

"Do you miss it?"  Lila asks him one night, with syrup on her hands.  He was standing at the kitchen and trying to scrub chocolate out of her sweater, because she is exceptionally clumsy and does not seem to know how to make it through a meal without spilling things.  But he can't even yell at her, because Laura had said no more hot chocolate or soda with dinner, only milk, and if he yelled Clint would get in trouble too.  Also he doesn't like to yell.  That's a new thing, having to punish them, when all he can think about is how lucky he is to be here, but Laura said that if he's not going to be off saving the world, she doesn't have to be the bad guy all the time.  "Being a hero."

 _He's still a hero,_ Laura would have said, if she was here, just like she had done every time Cooper had asked.   _Just not on active duty anymore._

"Sometimes."  He made up his mind, after those nights in the raft where he made promises to Wanda about protecting her and Cap was the one to save her, that he would not lie to his kids.  That he would tell the truth, so that they would be ready.  "I was really good at it."

"There's this kid at school.  Wyatt.  He's smart.  He knows everything."  Clint knows Wyatt.  He knows that Wyatt kissed her on the playground on a dare and he wanted to punch him, never mind that they were ten years old.  "He says that you killed people."

He knew they were going to find out eventually, but he hoped it wouldn't be this young, when they look at their father and start to see a murderer instead.  "I did."

"Were they bad people?"

"I'm not sure.  I know that they were doing bad things."  He pulls her up onto his knee, hoping that he is saying the right things, that knowing this will not make her afraid of him.  He is so desparetly, overwhelmingly terrified that one day he would do something to make his kids afraid.  "And that those things were hurting other people.  So I did what they needed to."

"I want to be a hero. But I don't want to kill people."  He was choking on a sob.  So many times in these past few months where he had to swallow down tears and pretend to be okay.  He thinks that's a big part of being a parent, having things happen that make you want to cry but having to hide it so you're kids buy into the myth that you're invincible.  "Do you think that would work?"

No.

"Yeah, kid,"  He says, because he is not in the business of lying to children but sometimes you have to.  "I think you can do anything you want."

 

 

 

When the footage from New York cuts into the football game that he and Cooper are watching, Laura sends the kids to bed, never mind that it is only 6:30.  

"What is this?"  She looks terrified.  The one thing about being on the front lines is that Clint has never had this unique experience that so many other husbands must have had, where they put their arms around their wives shoulders and try to make them feel better even though there is no way that they can possible promise that they are going to make it out okay.  He doesn't like it very much.  Doesn't think he is very good at it, seeing as he was still standing across the room.  "Who are they?"

"I don't know."  He's not used to not knowing. Normally he has files that he can access with just the touch of a button, or Stark would find out and tell them anyways.  "They were never one of ours."

"Do you need to go?"  

She would let him go.  Would let him go, and then she would sit here in the living room all night, watching it all unfold, whatever  _it_ might mean.  Terrified, and alone, and left to try and be strong for the kids.  He doesn't want to do that to her again.

"No,"  and he intends to mean it.  He really is trying to be better.  "I'm staying right here."

 

 

 

(He means that, but when the news comes across that the great Tony Stark and the spider kid had gotten swept out into space and Laura's hand tightened around his, Clint got up.  Got up, and went out to the barn, and dug out that old phone and duffel bag that he promised himself that he would never use, and then lays it on the table between them, because he figures that she deserves to know that he is ready to leave.

"I thought that you were done," She says, not looking at him, and there is nothing angry in her voice, but she is tired.  He wonders how long he can keep leaving her before she gets tempted to do the same.

"It's just in case," He says, but he watches it more than he needs to.

Steve never calls.)

 

 

 

They are fighting when it happens.

Fighting over something stupid, that started because he was too nice to Cooper when he threw a football through the window, and he had told Laura that she was being ridiculous, that the world might be ending so they might as well have been fun, and she had said something like,  _do you have any idea how many times I sat through the end of the world and still managed to be a mother,_ and from there they were screaming about the phone and the constantly packed go bag and how Clint never manages to leave the fight behind, not really.

He had turned away from her so he didn't have to look at her.  After everything, Clint is still so afraid of himself, of the things that he had done and could do.  He has never hurt her, but that does not mean that he cannot feel the anger curling up in his fists, and when he feels the urge to hit something, he finds it is better to be facing the cabinet than his wife.

( _Not,_ and here he wants to be very clear,  _that he ever wants to hit his wife.  He's just afraid, scared that one day he'll look in the mirror and figure out that he's turned into his father, so it's better to just take that out of the equation before it can even start._ )

"Clint," She says, and he is never going to forget that word for the rest of his life, the way she said his name- the terror and the panic and how he knew, immediately, that something was wrong, very, very wrong.  "Clint."

He has a gun pointed into empty air before his brain catches up with his instincts, because they live out in the middle of no where, so what could have scared her so bad other than a wild animal or robber, unless some country had sent an assassin to kill him, and honestly, he was so tense that he would have welcomed a fight, but there was nothing.  No one.

"Clint," She says, and this time he sees it, the way she is staring down at her hand, or the space where her hand should have been, that the world seemed to be eating her up, grey ash falling down to the floor at her feet, soft and slow and with nothing but a slow hiss.  "What-,"

"Laura." He lurches towards her, and it doesn't make sense, and he is not helping, just grabs at the ash, at the parts of her that were there one minute and were crumbling into nothing in the next, tries to hold her back together, and it was the first time in a long time that he can remember being completely helpless, and he never thought that there would be something bad that he could not save her from, and yet-, "It's okay, you'll be okay," and her voice, one more time, not pleading, not scared, not asking to stay, never ever asking to stay, saying "Clint" and then nothing, nothing but the ash that used to be his wife pooling like burning embers in his palms and scattering over his clothes, drifting across the floor.  He thinks that he should close the window in some numb, stupid, nonsensical part of his brain, close the window before every part of her is gone, and he might have sat there all night staring at what is left of her, but then the screaming starts.

( _There are no words for that.  When you hear a sound that seems to be ripping out of someone's stomach, from some deep part of their chest.  The sound that his daughter was making was nothing but terror, and Clint would be ashamed of this later, but in his heart he knows what he thought as soon as he heard that sound- please, god, not her, anyone but my little girl, and later he would wonder if that prayer was the reason why she was the one to stay._ )

"Dad,"  She says when he finally hurtles into the room, glad that both her and Cooper were in one place, and in front of him was some weird, fun house mirror version of what had happened in the kitchen, her standing there covered in the dust like they had been holding each other while it happened.  Probably had been, if they had heard his screams from the kitchen.  Probably had been scared out of their minds, and he wasn't there to protect them, wasn't there to keep her from seeing it.  "He just went away, daddy," And she was sobbing, stumbling over to clutch at his legs, and he is thinking how she couldn't touch him because he is trying to keep Laura all together, and he is also thinking how he was only a second too late, because he can still kind of make out the shape of him, what with the dust still floating through the air, and even as she clutches at him, crying, even as he is ever so grateful that at least she is okay, he is also thinking  _my son, my first son, my boy_ and sometimes there is no way to be strong in the face of that, even when you need to be.  

(By the time he pries her away from him and stumbles down the hallway to Nathaniel's room, catching sight first of that open window and then of the empty bed, there is nothing left, not even the ash.)

 

 

 

 He makes it a month.

One month of pancake breakfasts where Lila does her best to talk and he tries to eat even though everything tastes of nothing, a month of homework and going over vocab words, a month of being in this big house with just the two of them.  A month where he stares at the burner phone all night and sleeps through the day while she's at school, when he finally cuts away that ankle monitor and SHIELD is in such a shamble that they don't even notice.

He doesn't make it any further. 

"Daddy, no,"  She is screaming, not like she had been the night of the Red Wave, but it reminds him of that nonetheless.  Everything she does reminds him of that night, of trying to put Laura back together, of how she had held her brother as he crumbled into dust and there was nothing Clint could do to save them.  "Please, I'm sorry, daddy, I'll be good, I'll be quiet."

"You didn't do anything wrong," he says, because that is what you say to your child when you are abandoning them on the steps of their grandmothers house without calling ahead, and he can see Laura's mother struggling to her feet through the screen door and does not want to deal with it, so he just shoves her teddy bear into her arms and tries not to be concerned about how hard she is crying.  "This isn't about you.  Daddy just has some things that he needs to do."

"Take me with you.  I can help you.  I can be a hero," She says, and that wrenches him, makes it feel like someone has wound a string around him ribs and suddenly decided to  _yank,_ and he closes his eyes to hide it.  "You said I could be a hero.  Daddy, daddy  _you promised."_

"I know," and he shoves her away, pushes her back and only realizes after he does it that she is standing in the middle of a mud puddle, and this, too, is one of his sins to pile onto the list, leaving her in the pouring rain with a teddy bear that she hasn't used in ages clutched to her chest, and Laura would be so disappointed, but he has things to do.

What is it that Nat used to say?  He's got red in his ledger, he thinks, staring at her, and he blows her a kiss through the window as he peels out of the driveway, and watches her get smaller in the rearview mirror, still standing in that mud puddle, still crying.  It's time he wipes it out.

 

 

It's a hit list.

He had played around with different things, called it different names, but in the end he tallied up the sins of other people he had no right to judge and passed the sentence, decided whether they get to live or die.

Clint didn't mean to start it.  It was just that he was driving, on his way to find Steve and offer his assistance when he looked up and realized that the name of the town was familiar.  Realized that he knew it from a story he was told when he was in jail, about a priest, one that ruined the lives of little boys, over and over and over, and that the church did nothing about it other than shuffle him around so the accusations lost momentum, put him in the position so he can hurt more kids, again and again, and in his head those kids all looked liked Cooper, and without even making a conscious decision he's getting off the exit and pulling up in front of the church.

The man hadn't understood, not even when Clint told him what he knew.  Clint wasn't sure he really got it even after he put an arrow through his throat.

"Do you remember me?"  This is the thirtieth.  Or the fortieth.   Clint doesn't know- sometimes he loses track, forgets the days, spends hours just driving on the highway with no destination in mind.  Somehow, the money never runs out.  He has the suspicion that Tony had set up all the Avengers accounts to pull right from Tony's, and that wasn't fair to Pepper now, but Clint doesn't make a sign of stopping.  "You haven't seen me in a while."

There's blood.  Normally, Clint is quick.  Clean.  Efficient.  He was never good at this part, not like Nat was.  Could never stomach this game of cat and mouse, where he plays with his food.  But for this one, he was taking his time.  This one was his.

"Course I remember you."  He turns his head, spits blood out at Clint's feet.  "You bring the money back you stole?"

"It was my money.  I earned it.  You didn't pay us fair."  He wasn't sure why he was arguing.  Didn't know why he came back here, to him.  He thought he buried this a long time ago.  "It was abuse, what you did."

"I made you," He says, and that's the fear, there, that everything Clint is he owes to this man.  "What do they call you now?  Hawkeye?  I bet you pretend it's a nickname.  You think they know, where you got it, that the old carnival master put a bow in your hands and told you to either get good or get going?  You were good,"  He says, and smiles, showing off that sparkling sheen of blood that was covering his teeth, and Clint kicks out again, makes him cough and splutter.  "But I made you great."

Normally, Clint gives them the chance to run.

This time, he wants to see.  Wants this man to know that Clint never intended to let him go.

 

 

 

There is a group that thinks that Thanos is something sacred.  They're sort of confused about what the Red Wave meant, but Clint had lurked in the shadows long enough to get the gist: Thanos is their god, some second coming of one sacred idol or another.  That the people that were lost in the Red Wave were either Saints or Sinners, raised up to live in the next world, and they were having some form of higher life, either in torture of ecstasy, depending on what school of thought was correct on  _why_ those people were chosen.  That everyone left behind must work to atone for their sins or else they will be left behind again when Thanos does return to take his rightful place as ruler.

Clint hates them.  He knows that they are only misguided, that they are terrified and just trying to make sense of what had happened, and yet, he hates them.  And yet, he is doing this.

"He killed my family,"  He pants out, face dripping with blood.  His ears are ringing- one hearing aid had been lost when the parishioner by the door had rushed him, but Clint could still read lips.  Could still hear, even if the sounds were a little distant.  "You think that makes him something that you get to worship?"

"My son,"  The man says, stretched out one wrinkled, warped hand to him, looking at him with nothing but tenderness and mercy, but it doesn't matter.  Those were the wrong words to choose.  Clint kills him before he can say anything else.

They were not people who were prepared to fight, but they were bad people.  Thanos was built on sacrifice, and so were his followers.  And just like Thanos, they didn't care about collateral damage, and that was what Clint had spent these past few months trying to stop.

He would let no more innocent people pay for someone else's sins.  He would not sit and sulk when there was still a fight to be had.

( _He would run,_ is the real reason he is doing this.   _Run and run and run until he can no longer feel the grit that was his wife's ashes lining the creases of his palms, run until he loses that image of his daughter screaming in the rain._ )

"Clint," Someone says, and it sends him back to that night in the kitchen, but this is not Laura.  Laura would not have looked at the bodies sprawled around him and be calm.  Laura would not have stood and let him finish.  

He throws the arrow onto the ground.  Something tells him he would not need it anymore.  "Natasha."

She looks different.  Blonde. It's because she was on the run, he knows, but he does not like it, misses all the red.  Not that it doesn't look good on her.  She looks good with anything. 

"We called."  She nods at the burner phone that was lying in the gutter, phone screen cracked but still lighting up.  "Seems like you were busy."

He was angry at her, he found.  Angry that she let him get locked up on the raft.  Angry that she did not try and contact him during her time on the run.  Angry that she did not have Steve call to bring him into this fight, trying to tell himself that it would have made a difference if he was there, angry that she never called to check if he was okay.  Angry that she did not seem to care if either Laura or the kids made it out okay, but considering that she found him here, she's probably assuming that they didn't.

The Clint she knew from before the Red Wave would never leave one of his kids behind.

That Clint is gone.

"I've got orders from high up,"  She said, and it is such a de ja vu from the first time they met, where he stood with an arrow at her spine and gave her a second choice.  "Either I put you down or bring you in."

"They going to lock me up?"  

It's an old joke.  He is pretty sure that she would not do either of those things, if he refused to go with her.  They had made a pact, before, that if anything gets too much, if one of them gets in trouble, they would go on the run.  That they would disappear together, find a place to settle down, change their names and dye their hair and never look back.  But that was a long time ago- before the Avengers, before Laura, before the kids, back when he thought that they could be something that they never quite got around to acting on.

"Nah.  There's a lot of bad guys out there.  We need all the people we can get."  She bends down, picks up his duffel bag and hitches it over her shoulder, and Clint doesn't bother asking how long she had been watching him.  She might have known what he was doing since the priest, who knows.  And she definitely would have known after the old carnival man turned up missing.  "You got any fight left in you?"

He thinks about Lila, back home, waiting for him to come and get her.  Thinks about Laura and how he promised her that he was done, and that he would stay.  But then he thinks about practicing in the dark just in case, how he never really settled in at home, how often he checked that burner phone.  About how it didn't matter if he went back and was a good father, if him not fighting would let the bad guys in.

Clint never does answer, but she doesn't shoot, so he supposes they came to an agreement.

**Author's Note:**

> come find me on Instagram @olive.writes.fanfic


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